QT: Goal Check! Are You on Track for Success This Year?
How are you doing with your 2019 goals?
As this post goes live, we are officially 7 weeks into 2019.
Earlier this week, I did a goal check in the FB group, and I thought it might be a good time to do one on the podcast/blog as well.
(And to be clear, while I’m talking about goals for 2019 in this post/episode, the same principals apply no matter when you’re listening to this episode/reading this post and no matter what your time frame happens to be.)
So, I’ll ask again, how are you doing with your goals this year?
Where We Go Wrong With Goals
It’s no secret that New Year’s Resolutions are notoriously unsuccessful.
And whether you want to call a goal a resolution or not, they are basically the same thing.
Many of us runners have big ambitions, so it only makes sense that when a new year rolls around many of us set our intentions for the new year in line with those big ambitions.
Personally, I love it. I love big-ass goals that require months and/or years of work to be successful.
But if we aren’t careful, those big goals can set us up for failure.
The goal seems so far off in the distance that it’s easy to lose focus on the target. It’s easy to get off track, without necessarily realizing it, and by the time we figure it out the amount of work needed to be done to make up for lost time is overwhelming.
That is why a goal check is so valuable.
Regularly assessing your progress in relation to your goals is one of the most important things you can do to increase your chances of success.
And not enough runners, or people for that matter, do the regular goal check to help them stay on track.
But I’m not going to let that happen to you!
Goal Check!
How are you doing with your goals?
Are you on track? Ahead of schedule? Falling behind?
If you’re serious about successfully reaching your goals this year, and if you’re still reading this post I’m going to make the bold assumption that reaching your goals actually matters to you, then you need to be brutally honest with yourself in assessing where you are with your goals right now.
So, before you read any farther, take a few minutes to honestly assess how you’re doing with your goals.
Don’t worry, I’ll wait.
Let Your Goal Check Guide You
Now that you’ve taken an honest look at where you are in relation to your goals, what’s next?
Where do you go from here?
Obviously, it depends on what you learned by checking in on your goals.
Here are a few common realizations after a goal check, and what a suggested next step would be.
Hopefully, you can use these general suggestions as a launching pad to help you determine exactly what your next step forward needs to be.
And if you’re still unsure and you’d like some help planning out your next step, feel free to schedule a call and I’ll be more than happy to give you some thoughts to help you get back on track with your goals.
What Were My Goals Again?
Let’s not kid ourselves.
We have all set goals at one point or another and forgotten what our goals were!
If you’re in that situation right now, no worries.
That’s one of the biggest benefits of a regular goal check: it helps to make sure that your goals stay top of mind.
If you forget about the goals you have set for yourself, your odds of being successful are virtually zero.
Again, don’t feel bad for forgetting about your goals in the first seven weeks of the year.
It happens.
But don’t let it happen again.
Write your goals for the year down somewhere that you’ll see them, and consistently remind yourself of what you’re working toward this year.
Not as Well as I’d Hoped…
If, after the goal check, you determine that you haven’t made as much progress to date as you’d hoped, don’t give up now!
You still have 45 weeks to get back on track, so get after it!
That said, part of an honest goal check is to not only identify where you are in relation to your goals but also to identify what, if anything, is impeding your progress.
At this point, you need to assess whether or not it’s realistic that you can catch up or if you need to readjust your target.
If you can play catch up, then develop a plan and start chipping away at the deficit so that you’ll be back on pace sooner rather than later.
If you don’t think you can catch up, then adjust your target.
It’s ok to change your goal mid-stream, you know that right?
Instead of giving up completely, refocus on a different target that is more realistic than your original goal and get cracking toward the new goal.
On Track
If your goal check reveals that you’re on track, then carry on!
What you’ve been doing is obviously working, and there’s no sense in trying to fix what isn’t broken.
Job well done to this point, now keep it going!
Way Ahead of Schedule?
This isn’t often the case, but every so often a goal check will reveal that you’re not just on track but you’re well ahead of where you’d be expected to be at the moment.
On the surface, this sounds like a good problem to have, right?
Obviously, it’s better to be ahead of schedule than it is to be falling behind the desired pace.
But if you find that things are going exceptionally well, it may be worth thinking about setting your sights a bit higher.
Make Regular Goal Checks a Regular Thing
The more often you check in on your goals and your progress toward them, the more likely you will be successful.
That doesn’t mean you need to do a proper check in every day, but I’d encourage you to do a goal check at least once a month.
And weekly is probably even better.
Keeping your eyes on the prize is important, obviously.
But keeping track of the progress you’re making is pretty important as well.
Originally published at www.dizruns.com on February 15, 2019.